New inspection regime ‘beneficial for care providers’

The business in charge of a Morpeth care home has praised the changes to the inspection system.

Some providers in Northumberland have recently criticised the new Care Quality Commission (CQC) regime, comments include the belief that the body is too focused on being critical.

But Kay Care Services, which runs the Terravis Park residential home near Stobhill, says the programme is more detailed as it goes into all aspects of the services at care homes. This comes after Terravis Park received an overall rating of requires improvement from the CQC following an inspection in March.

It was given this grade for the following questions: Is the service safe? Is the service effective? Is the service well-led? It was rated good for two categories: Is the service caring? Is the service responsive?

The report states: ‘People could move freely between the first and ground floors of the home. There were no safety mechanisms, however, on the open stairs.

‘We recommend that the design and decoration of the premises is based on current best practice in relation to the specialist needs of people living with dementia.

‘Within care records, some documentation was unnamed or undated. Some records had not been completed or had only been partially completed.

‘During our inspection, we saw there were enough staff to meet people’s needs. The atmosphere in the home was calm and people’s requests were responded to quickly.

‘All of the people we spoke with who used the service, and their relatives, spoke highly of the staff at the home and the GP and a district nurse who were visiting the home during our inspection both told us people were well cared for.’

Hayley Quinn, operations director for Kay Care Services, said: “The new CQC regime is better because it covers all aspects of our service. The previous framework focused too much on what we wrote rather than what we actually did.

“We have already met some of the recommendations in the report – for example we’ve done a dementia-friendly design in our music room.

“The report will help us to make further improvements. Over the last few years we have gone from the worst band (four) to the top of band two in the county council’s Quality Weighted Payment Scheme.”